Monday, March 7, 2011

Old Town, Shanghai

Recently, a friend of the blog went to Shanghai to visit a friend. He likes riding bikes here, so naturally, it seems, he wanted to ride while abroad. His friend took a video of them riding. Take notice of the road...looks smooth as butta baby, and for quite some time.

7 comments:

Very cool, thanks for sharing. I was struck by a couple things. First, the sounds - except for when the motor scooter passed, there were just the bikes and conversations. Second, where I live we have what is called the Bike Priority Zone, but it is nothing compared to what is seen in that video. Even though there were cars parked, I could see absolutely no advantage to them. It would have been painfully slow to drive along that street. Feet and bikes, much more efficient.

thanks for posting my video! this was a small side street in old town, a little too narrow and crowded for cars. in shanghai, bikes are the second lowest order on the road food chain aside from pedestrians. so you really gotta be careful.

Wow, that was a nice little tour of a slice of life in China! That's the kind of street I would like to live on with all the living going on. A little close, but much more interesting than our suburban development.

Thank you to Conner for sharing the video, and to Calitexican for posting it.

I'm picturing what it would mean to have a street this active, yet this friendly to pedestrians and bikes, here in my beloved Portland. I think that if we could achieve something like that, the property value would skyrocket as everyone tried to move into the quiet, safe neighborhood.

That is a great Video,that Street is totally unsuitable for Cars. Reminds me of an area in Dublin that ceased to exiest around 30 Years ago called Coles Lane. It was full of narrow Lanes off Moore Street with little Ramshackle Shops and Building's like they were ready to fall down. They sold Old Clothes and Briq a Braque and Fruit and Vegetables and Fish mostly. Then the Corporation of Dublin moved in and Condemned it and it was thorn down and the area Renovated. The whole Character of the area was ruined.

Bicycle travel videos are always a plus. Reminds me of recent out-of-town rides in TX and England....although Shanghai seems to have both of those locales beat with so many interesting side-street sights!